Ubiquitous sustainability: a multidisciplinary approach towards the second generation of sustainability research

1. Introduction

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering (IJSE), in this, our eighth year of publication. It is with great excitement that we announce an increase in the number of issues in IJSE, from four in previous years, up to six issues per year starting from 2015. This growth is reflective of the rapid increase in Research, Innovation and Development (RID) work observed in the area of sustainability in recent years. To mark the start of this next phase of growth for IJSE, the Editors have taken the opportunity to share the results of a recent review of sustainable engineering research, which has led to forming future directions for the journal.

2. The challenge of ubiquitous sustainability

It is clearly apparent that over the past decade the adoption of sustainability principles has rapidly moved from an ‘added bonus’, to a ‘core business consideration’ within many companies across every industrial sector. In fact, the majority of organisations – from material producers and manufacturers, to retailers and waste recyclers – now often have their own dedicated sustainability strategy as part of their management structures. This growth in the adoption of industrial sustainability practices, however, should not lead to complacency amongst either the research community, or wider stakeholders and practitioners. Whilst we have seen increased investment in sustainability initiatives during the last 2–3 decades, we have also witnessed rapid growth in our negative impact on the environment. In fact, the rate of growth of negative environmental impact has far superseded the benefits that have been achieved through various corporate, national and international sustainability initiatives. This observed ‘rebound effect’ highlights an urgent need to amplify our efforts towards development and implementation of practices that not only mitigate our negative impacts, but also rebuild, replenish and reverse the effects of the past behaviours. As such, there is a clear need for a new generation of sustainability RID activities with the potential to make radical reductions in environmental impacts.

The core of this next generation of research initiatives must be the ubiquitous consideration of sustainability throughout future industrial practices. This can only be achieved through holistic, integrated system-thinking, as opposed to dealing with these concerns as dispersed issues or afterthoughts. Achieving ubiquitous sustainability therefore necessitates not only the continuation of our efforts in improving our products, processes, materials and technologies, but will also require us to utilise a root cause analysis to support the realisation of ‘Factor-X’ improvements. We believe this provides a clear opportunity for growth in revolutionary research, necessitating the careful exploration of paradigm-shifting areas such as novel design methods, transformative models of consumption and new business strategies for industrial growth, as well as disruptive resource efficient technologies.

3. Towards a second generation of sustainability research

These unprecedented challenges highlight the need for a more intelligent and informed approach to our long-term, strategic planning to direct our future RID activities. One of the most common methods for this is through foresighting and scenario planning activities, which enable companies to look into the future, and develop roadmaps towards planning more resilient and effective business strategies (Wack 1985). Work in this area has been conducted by industry and public bodies alike to provide an insight into the long-term scenarios that may impact their businesses and communities. As such, this approach has informed a range of activities including technology development (Sony 2011), energy supply planning (Shell 2011; WEC 2007), societal lifestyle and consumption programmes (CSCP 2011; Forum for the Future 2008), and manufacturing and trade strategies (EC 2003; DTI 2002).

One such foresighting project specifically tailored to the needs of future manufacturing industries is illustrated in Figure 1. In this research, the SMART manufacturing scenarios consider the impact of resource depletion, population growth and climate change on future businesses and societies, to cultivate four possible ‘socio-futures’ that manufacturing industries may have to operate within 2050 (Centre for SMART 2014).

Figure 1 SMART manufacturing scenarios. Adapted from Centre for SMART (2014).

In these scenarios, Sustainable Planet represents a situation where consumerism is low, and advances towards circular economies and sustainable production have created an environment in which society can thrive under environmentally sensible conditions. Unsustainable Planet conversely represents a scenario in which high consumerism and lack of investment in environmental technologies have resulted in limited access to resources. In the Technologically Sustained Planet scenario, the world is sustained by technological innovations and clean, abundant energy sources. Although consumerism and resource throughput are high, advanced technologies have enabled effective closed loop manufacturing. Finally, the Socio-Economically Sustained Planet represents a situation where financial crisis has driven down consumption patterns, and lack of investment in sustainable technologies has led to localised communities and markets protecting their resources with little cooperation, and little research or innovation.

To address the challenges presented by each of these scenarios, there is a clear need for collaboration between a range of different disciplines – from sociologists and economists, to scientists and engineers – all of whom must work together to develop sustainable industrial solutions in the face of increasing uncertainty. In this context, these foresighting programmes not only provide opportunities to better inform strategic planning for our future RID activities, but also highlight the paramount importance of the direct involvement of industry, consumers and governments in shaping future models of production and consumption.

4. A new phase for the IJSE

In light of this required evolution in sustainability RID, the editorial team of IJSE has reviewed the range and focus of manuscripts that have been published in the previous seven volumes of this journal. One of the founding principles of IJSE has been to provide a multi-disciplinary source of information for various researchers and engineers from different backgrounds and disciplines. The aforementioned growth in sustainability research, however, has resulted in the generation of a large number of very specialised projects and manuscripts. Whilst these specialist papers may offer limited transferable knowledge for the IJSE readership, they will undoubtedly offer greater benefit to more relevant audiences through publication in suitable journals. Such media for sharing this work have been emerging over the last few years with the launch of a wide range of specialised sustainability journals, from those targeting Sustainable Tourism, Transportation and Construction, to those targeting Sustainable Materials, Chemical Processes, Textiles and Clothing. Therefore, in consultation with our Editorial Board, it has been decided that within IJSE we should focus on manuscripts with significant transferable knowledge across various industrial sectors, or on those manuscripts that are based on a multi-disciplinary approach towards developing a sustainable engineering solution; in particular in the paradigm-shifting areas outlined above and illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Prism of research towards ubiquitous sustainability in engineering.

In line with this, we have now updated our reviewing process and are asking our authors to highlight and comment about the transferable knowledge and multi-disciplinary nature of research in any manuscripts submitted. We have also revised the aims and scope of IJSE, which can be found online at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show = aimsScope&journalCode = tsue20#.VFI6L_nkfYg.

Finally, to enable our authors to reach their desired audiences, we are pleased to announce that IJSE offers a Gold open access option (Open Select), whereby authors can choose to publish in the journal and pay an article publishing charge to make the article freely available online upon publication. Alternatively, articles can be published via the usual route and archive the Original or Accepted Manuscript (Green open access). To this end IJSE is now compliant with the growing requirements of international funding bodies for open access publication. For more information visit the Taylor & Francis Author Services OA page at: http://www.journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/OpenAccess.asp.

5. Papers in this issue: strategic decision-making

To underpin the importance of strategic and informed decision-making, this milestone issue of IJSE presents six research papers exploring improved metrics and decision-support for promoting sustainable development. These papers cover a broad range of industrial activity beginning with the earliest stages of conceptual life cycle design, moving through sustainable plants and processes, and finally concluding with waste recovery and management.

The first paper by de Pauw et al. opens this issue by considering nature-inspired life-cycle design strategies, and discusses a novel assessment tool that can be used to enable designers and engineers to develop more environmentally sustainable solutions. The authors posit that existing tools are insufficiently equipped to deal with the complex considerations needed to develop truly sustainable products, and therefore they propose two new elements which should be included in current life-cycle-based product assessment, namely assessing against conditions of sustainability, and assessing the extent to which these conditions of sustainability have been achieved.

This second paper in this issue by Husgafvel et al. explores the application of social sustainability metrics within the process industry as part of a holistic ‘social sustainability index’ which aims at presenting a balanced view of plant-level performance. To this end, the authors outline a number of social indicators within the categories of location, supply chain, social innovations, labour practices, training and education, reporting, health and safety, and legal-social aspects – and demonstrate their application in the measurement of sustainability performance in a metal processing plant, towards supporting strategic management and corporate-level decision-making.

This is followed by a paper by Shokrian et al. that discusses the incorporation of sustainability into process design and compares two methods for the evaluation and selection of appropriate manufacturing processes: the overall impact factor and aggregated fuzzy rank approaches. These two approaches are applied within a ‘sustainability evaluator’ method and their application is demonstrated in selection of process alternatives in pharmaceutical manufacturing for systematic impact assessment, and identification of the most appropriate processes.

This issue continues with a paper by Vimal et al. that presents the development of a conceptual model for assessing process sustainability against the ‘triple bottom line’ using a multi-grade fuzzy approach and a comprehensive set of 30 different criteria. This model is applied to a case study of rotary switch manufacturing to give a ‘process sustainability index’ that helps identify and target areas for process sustainability performance improvement.

The paper by Li et al. proposes an empirical approach towards characterising the energy and eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes. This is achieved through measuring and predicting the energy consumption of a given machine tool, and the application of their developed method is demonstrated using injection moulding machines and processes which has shown that the data obtained using these models are accurate enough to be used to improve the quality of current life-cycle inventory data.

This issue concludes with a paper from Kim and Lee that presents a case study for the design and operation of a municipal refuse collection system. The challenges presented by reverse logistics in the paper address the design of the collection network, capacity planning for the operation, and the required vehicle routing and numbers. The authors utilise two tabu search algorithms, both hierarchical and integrated, to give comprehensive solutions for each of the challenges, enabling them to understand and minimise both the fixed and variable costs associated with the proposed collection systems, and therefore to design the most effective and sustainable method for the recovery of end-of-life products.

6. Concluding remarks

We are very excited by the opportunity to facilitate and support this next generation of sustainability research, and look forward to the continued support of our authors, reviewers, editorial team and administrators during the next phase of the growth of IJSE. We are heavily dependent on the contribution of our knowledgeable and motivated colleagues, and as such at the back of this issue, in a customary fashion, we have acknowledged the contribution of the reviewers involved through the last year for papers published within volume seven.

Finally, we will now also be extending and renewing the Editorial Board Membership of IJSE and welcome applications from suitable candidates both in specific geographical locations such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and non-OECD countries, and from within specific subject areas such as material engineering, emerging technologies, ICT and systems engineering, corporate social responsibility, and business modelling and management.